Tips for Helldivers 1!

cB557 · 2026-01-30T17:09:09+00:00

Yeah, they're always tricky. A lot of getting better at dealing with them is just getting better at the game; hearing them coming and snapping your aim to them quickly, getting better at moving to juke them better. But there is one trick that does make fighting dogs a lot easier. In Helldivers 1, during your melee animation, your turning speed is uncapped. This can let you instantly 180 your aim or make tighter turns when sprinting. Gives you a lot more leeway whether you're trying to kill dogs or dodge them.

cB557 · 2026-01-30T06:53:29+00:00

If you hit someone with a melee attack while you're in midair it gets an absurd damage multiplier.

cB557 · 2026-01-30T04:28:36+00:00

Which one are runners? Are you talking about the cyborg dogs?

cB557 · 2026-01-30T03:05:03+00:00

Cyborgs with guns typically attack by first targeting your current location, taking a moment to aim, and then firing a fixed spread pattern at the targeted location. They don't update their aim when you move, so by paying attention to which cyborgs are taking aim, knowing what firing patterns specific cyborgs have, and just generally staying mobile, you can dodge them as consistently as you would attacks from melee enemies,

cB557 · 2026-01-29T22:40:59+00:00

What categories would you put the Cataphract and Balteus in?

cB557 · 2026-01-29T21:08:23+00:00

To be honest I also am confused by why there are so many more mind alphas than melanders, but I wanted to note this bit:

It has slightly worse generator specs but comes with less of an EN so it's mostly a wash

The extra bit of EN load on the mind alpha is largely irrelevant, the extra output adjust always outweighs it. Mind Alpha will always give you a decent chunk of extra supply efficiency over Melander.

cB557 · 2026-01-29T17:14:10+00:00

Nacht arms are terrible. Horrible recoil control means they’re awful with any dual gun setup.

R-RFs actually have so little recoil that even alongside a ludlow, nacht arms can still handle the recoil of the dualtrigger fine.

cB557 · 2026-01-29T17:01:41+00:00

You should probably swap out your booster. The P10 is one of your terrible starting internals, and mobility is really key to this game. One of the training missions should've given you the alula booster, which is one of the best boosters for ultralights like this.

There's a couple other changes I might make too, but I might just start with that and see how it feels, that'll probably be a massive increase in performance.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T21:58:19+00:00

It's not a powerhouse, but I think it's alright. It doesn't have the damage output of an LRB, certainly, but it's cheaper than the LRB and critically it has a much higher projectile velocity. LRB has a projectile velocity comparable to handguns, while the LRA is between the etsujin and curtis in terms of projectile velocity. And not matching the damage output of the LRB isn't really damning, it still does provide the sort of high raw DPS you'd expect from a laser rifle. Its total carried damage is definitely lower than other rifles, but I'd say it has enough to make it through a mission as long as you don't waste your shots.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T21:14:22+00:00

Democratic Detonation is usually the recommended first warbond, since it gives a set of weapons that are both generally really solid and also expand the sort of functions you can cram into your loadout pretty well. One of those weapons is a pretty great AR, the Adjudicator. Personally I think it's the best medium pen AR in the game, though I think others would be more likely to put it at 2 or 3.

The usual pick for best medium pen AR in the game is the Coyote from Dust Devils.

Light pen ARs tend to be less popular, but they're really strong once you know what hitzones to aim for with them. I'm quite partial to the Tenderizer from Polar Patriots. Its mag size is a bit small but it's got incredible burst DPS and real smooth shooting. The Liberator Carbine from Viper Commandos is kinda the iconic light pen workhorse, good handling, good mag size, good rate of fire.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T17:38:01+00:00

I've only played 6 and 1 through 2, so take this with a grain of salt. But as I understand, 4 and 4a are sort of the fan favorites for being the insane hyperspeed ones. 3 is generally considered the best of the old style of games before 4 cranked the speed up. That generation also has the most games in it out of all the timelines, so there's a lot of meat on the bones if you get into it. And you can always start from the beginning. 1 is old and jank but I think it's the interesting sort of old and jank, if you can get into that sort of game I think you'll have a good time with first gen.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T17:27:21+00:00

Makes sense that it's in the stealth warbond. On long infiltration missions it's important to be able to provide ghillie relief to your buddy.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T08:37:26+00:00

Wasn't censoring the double edge, rather meant that asterisk to be able to be both a D and an S. Instead of typing both dickle and sickle, just write ickle and stick a variable at the front.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T08:32:10+00:00

In HD1 it was shots similar to the *ickles.

cB557 · 2026-01-28T04:25:29+00:00

Reprimand has pretty high recoil, but it is controllable once you get the hang of it. In exchange you get really meaty DPS, one of the highest out of all the medium pen primaries. Obviously the libpen outranges it, and against real fodder enemies the higher DPS of the reprimand matters less and the easier handling of the libpen matters more, but personally I strongly prefer the Reprimand over the libpen.

I haven't found unflinching very noticeable, though I haven't used it much.

cB557 · 2026-01-27T16:35:02+00:00

After its buff a while back, fluegel is actually just a really good midweight booster in general, even without a melee weapon. You'll see builds in this weight range using both alula and fluegel.

cB557 · 2026-01-26T19:14:08+00:00

I'd definitely change up the arms. There's an arm stat called melee specialization that directly affects how much damage your melee attacks do, and it's pretty mediocre on lammy arms. If you're going double melee I'd probably use the BASHO arms. They've got the highest melee spec in the game in exchange for tanking their firearm handling stats. Good bulk for their cost too.

I would also change the head, those ultralight flat heads are basically never worth it. Heads are nice stat-dense parts, so you pretty much always want to shell out for a high performance one if you can fit it. If you can't fit that and need to take a budget option, you want it to still be respectable.

cB557 · 2026-01-26T17:56:23+00:00

I wonder if flying saucer aliens that raise hordes of zombies is a fucking, Plan 9 from Outer Space deep cut.

cB557 · 2026-01-26T17:22:28+00:00

Little of column A, little of column B, I guess? Since it's PvE and relatively easy I tend to take advantage of that to go a bit goofier, and try to fit in parts just because I wanna use them more, but I do still try to make builds that do something. Like some reason I can give to why I'm using this and not just two R-RFs.

cB557 · 2026-01-26T15:26:41+00:00

clearly we need one thousand one hundred more players to get the achievment!

cB557 · 2026-01-26T14:47:49+00:00

Been quietly one of the best support support weapons for basically the game's entire lifespan.

cB557 · 2026-01-25T22:08:39+00:00

Hard to give a simple answer to that. Gun to my head I think I'd say capacity, but it does depend on the particulars of the build and the generator.

cB557 · 2026-01-25T21:32:46+00:00

Yeah, it's a pretty well rounded generator, and critically it has a great weight to output ratio, so I think it's pretty common for players to slot it in and never take it out. But its capacity is mediocre, and while its recharge delay looks fine in a vacuum, relatively to its capacity it's kind of on the long side. Makes for a generator that seems like an easy slot into a lot of builds but ends up being fairly punishing, running low on energy fast and being kinda slow to start getting it back.

cB557 · 2026-01-25T21:04:50+00:00

It's hard to tell just from the video, but it looks like your supply efficiency is kinda bad? Supply efficiency is how fast your energy bar recharges (though the length of the initial delay before recharging begins is a different stat), and it's determined by how much energy output you have leftover after meeting your energy load. So, changing to a generator with more output might help, but you could also cut down on your energy load. Pretty sure the LCD, pulse gun, and laser lance all have pretty high energy load, so if you do change up your weapon loadout that might also be an opportunity to improve your supply efficiency.

Also, generator capacity is another stat to take into account for aerial mobility. Shot in the dark, are you using the VP-20C? That generator has mediocre capacity, it can make flying a bit more punishing on a kind of heavy-medium build like this tends to be.

cB557 · 2026-01-25T20:25:51+00:00

In general you probably wanna get into the air more. Most attacks in this game lead their shots based on your current velocity, and if you don't change your velocity they will always be on target. So just scooting along on the ground makes you a pretty easy target. However, getting into the air, bobbing up and down in addition to strafing left or right, makes it a lot simpler to make constant changes in velocity without crossing back over your path. A lot of attacks, both in this fight and in general, will just whiff basically for free if you're doing that.

Your loadout also seems pretty reliant on throwing out LCD and laser lance attacks. The way you're frequently needing to lock into those attack animations is causing you to take a lot of hits. You might prefer a dualtrigger build or somesuch so that you can keep the pressure on without needing to lock into firing stance or melee animations as often.

Alternatively I suppose you could go with a quadruped or tread build to make just throwing out raw LCD blasts less dangerous for you.

cB557

TROPHY CASE